


sweet dreams and leave all worries behind you

by mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, in which alex gets to reunite with his wife, spoilers for the series finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10731912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrinneyFriday/pseuds/mygalfriday
Summary: Dressed in white and lit from behind by the sun, she looks like an angel. A very pissed off angel, judging by the frown on her face. He stares at her wordlessly, his eyes stinging.“About time,” she huffs. “God, you’re just as stubborn dead as you were alive.”





	sweet dreams and leave all worries behind you

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to tumblr but I wanted it here for posterity - things tend to get lost there.
> 
> Contains spoilers for 5x10. Kind of a missing scene. Written because Romero deserved a reunion too. 
> 
> Story title from Dream A Little Dream by the Mamas and the Papas.

Dying isn’t all that different from how he’s been imagining it for years -- a bullet from his own gun beside his wife’s resting place -- but he’d wanted to put her back where she belonged first. He’d wanted to slip her wedding ring back onto her finger and kill the fucking psychopath who had dug her up in the first place.

Even despite Norman ruining his plans just like the little shit ruins goddamn everything, as Alex stares blearily at the menacing outline of Norma’s son looming over him, some traitorous part of him feels relieved. It’s over.

He didn’t get to rid the world of Norman Bates but he doesn’t have to keep walking around with this gnawing, bitter acid eating away at his insides. He can sleep without hearing Norma’s voice, without dreaming of all the ways he could have prevented what happened to her. Nothingness will be a welcome respite. He shudders and it’s _cold_ but it has nothing to do with the ice and snow seeping into his clothes. Darkness hovers around the edges of his vision and as he slips away, Alex almost smiles.

Rays of sunlight prickle at his closed eyelids and he can’t feel the chill anymore. He feels warmer than he ever has, as warm as those meager but precious few weeks in the arms of Norma Bates -- a sun in her own right. He hears the sound of birdsong first, irritatingly cheerful, and then:

“Alex?” Fingertips ghost teasingly across his cheek and then the singsong voice comes again. “ _Aleeex_. Open your eyes, honey.”

Heart in his mouth, Alex cracks open one wary eye and discovers Norma Bates hovering over him. Blonde hair slipping into her eyes -- just as bright and piercing as he remembers -- she prods at his cheek with a fingertip the way she used to do before, when he’d been sleeping too long and she’d grown impatient. Dressed in white and lit from behind by the sun, she looks like an angel. A very pissed off angel, judging by the frown on her face. He stares at her wordlessly, his eyes stinging.

“About time,” she huffs. “God, you’re just as stubborn dead as you were alive.”

Mesmerized, Alex can only choke out, “Baby?”

Norma pokes him in the chest. “Honestly, Alex. I leave you alone for a few years and look at you -- running around getting yourself killed and I swear to god I can _smell_ the TV dinners you’ve been sustaining yourself on.”

“It wasn’t TV dinners, Norma,” he argues automatically, wearily, even as he marvels at how easy it has always been to forget everything else and simply bicker with his wife. “It was prison food.”

“Same thing.” She waves a dismissive hand and nearly swats him in the face with it. “The point is, you’re a mess. What’s the matter, Sheriff? Couldn’t live without me?”

She’s teasing him but he answers her seriously. “No.”

Norma softens and he feels that solid wall of steel he’d built around himself since he lost her crumbling to nothing as he watches that slow, wide smile spread across her face. “Careful, tough guy. People will think you’re madly in love with me.”

He captures her hand in his, his eyes drawn to the sparkling diamond on her finger that keeps catching the light. “How - it wasn’t -” He swallows and can’t bring himself to tell her it wasn’t on the hand of her corpse, buried in all that snow in the woods.

Norma watches him like she knows anyway. “That wasn’t me, Alex. Just a shell.” She shrugs, watching him toy with her fingers. “I never took it off. Not really.”

He swallows thickly, brushing his lips across her knuckles. “I’m sorry. About -”

“I know.” She traces the place where his own wedding band would be, if she’d ever gotten him one, and meets his gaze unwaveringly. “Me too.”

Alex stares at her, drinking her in like a man starved. His memory of her hadn’t been nearly as vivid as he’d thought. The years had worn away at her until she’d been nothing but a copy -- the details blurred and faded and not quite right. He’d forgotten the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed, the way she avoided his eyes when he said or did something too sweet -- like he couldn’t be real and if she looked at him he’d vanish.

He wants to ask her where they are. If he’s really dead or just hallucinating as he dies in the middle of the woods beside her corpse. If it even matters. But Norma doesn’t give him time to wonder if he really wants to know. She climbs to her feet and pulls him with her, tugging on his hand like an impatient little girl. “Come on. Let me show you around while we’re alone.”

He blinks at her, his feet still a little unsteady beneath him. “Expecting company?”

She smiles, serene and angelic and his heart skips a beat until she actually speaks. “Norman will be along soon.”

Alex stops in his tracks, his whole body going rigid as he stares at her. “What?”

Glancing at him over her shoulder, Norma rolls her eyes and drops his hand. “Don’t start. You’re not off the hook, Sheriff. I’m still mad at you.” When he squints at her incredulously, her eyes narrow. “You’ve spent the last god knows how long on some bullshit vigilante quest to kill my son.”

Working his jaw in silence for a moment, Alex curls his hands into fists and bites out, “He _murdered_ you.”

His voice wavers, even now with her standing right in front of him, but Norma doesn’t soften. “Don’t, Alex. Don’t you dare pretend that was all for me.” When he opens his mouth to protest, she raises an eyebrow that seems to suggest _disagree with me at your own risk_. “I mean maybe it was at first but it stopped being for me a long time ago.”

He looks away and swallows tightly. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

She sighs and her fingertips find the cuff of his jacket, smoothing out a wrinkle absently. “Admit it. You were pissed and you were grieving and you thought killing Norman might make it stop. You didn’t do all that for me because if you’d stopped wallowing in self pity for one second you would have known I would never have wanted you to hurt Norman. Not _ever_.”

She tugs at his sleeve, her mouth a thin line and her eyes hard with a mother’s ferocious protectiveness. Alex stands his ground and refuses to feel like a chastised child. She hadn’t been there. She doesn’t know what it was like, living every day with the warring memories in his head of her laughing mouth against his ear and her still, cooling body in his arms. She doesn’t known what it was like to hear _I will never trust you again_ on a fucking loop in his head. But Norma’s eyes are still bright and scolding and he scowls. 

“What did you expect me to do, Norma?”

Her fingers tighten on his sleeve, her knuckles brushing his wrist and her wide-eyed gaze fastened on him. “Help him.”

He scoffs, tugging his hand free of her grasp. “I tried that, remember? You weren’t too happy with me then either.”

Norma crosses her arms over her chest and regards him with that wounded, petulant expression he’s all too familiar with. The one that was always followed by sniffling and her hands clinging to his coat lapels, trusting him to make things better. She keeps her distance now, standing there in the sunlight in that bright white winter coat looking ethereal and avenging and it’s Alex who has a hard time keeping his hands to himself.

“You think I don’t know everything that happened was my fault?” She sniffs, staring somewhere over his shoulder, and for a moment all Alex can hear is those damn birds singing away in the trees. “I knew something was wrong but I didn’t want to face it. If I had, if I’d gotten him the right help, we - _he_ might have had a chance at being normal and happy.” She shuffles her booted feet and ducks her head, and when she looks up again, she’s wearing that defeated, self-deprecating grin he remembers. “Good thing I’m dead or I’d have to live with that.”

“Don’t.” Alex bites the inside of his cheek. “It’s not funny.”

Smile softening, she seeks out his gaze and holds it. “He’s just a sick boy, Alex,” she says softly. “And no matter what, I’m still his mother.”

A hint of steel flashes in her eyes and it’s only because he’s really looking that Alex realizes there’s something different about Norma here. His wife had always been strong as hell but there had been times when she reminded him of a nervous bird -- always fluttering anxiously but never getting too close. There’s a certain peace in her eyes now and serenity to her movements and he knows wherever the hell they are, she isn’t afraid anymore.

Norma holds out her hand and that slow, wide smile begins to bloom across her face again. “Things will be different now,” she promises. “You’ll see.”

He doesn’t know if he believes that but Norma seems to -- her eyes dancing and her cheeks flushed pink. That new tranquility radiates from her until he begins to feel it too. It’s warm here and it’s quiet and when he takes Norma’s hand, she laces their fingers tightly together like she has no intention of letting go.

Alex takes a deep breath and lets her lead him into the sunshine.


End file.
